How Can I Connect My Laptop To Large (dj Type) Speakers?
by admin on Sep.29, 2009, under DJ Equipment
I provide the music for a few dance-type events, and I was wondering what the best way would be to connect my dell laptop to a pair of good speakers. I am on a limited budged, otherwise I would buy a nice set of DJ equipment. Is there something I would need to connect my laptop to, that then connects to the speakers? I just need a pro’s opinion I guess. I appreciate all comments
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September 29th, 2009 on 11:20 am
The simplest, and most cost-effective, way to do this would be to use a 3.5mm to RCA Y-cable hooked up to the headphone output of your laptop into a mixer or directly into the amp or amplified speakers.
(In the past, y-cables were popular for hooking up portable cd players to stereo systems, but they’re not used so much in the day of iPods. You can get one at Radio Shack or most electronics retailers. Here’s a decent price on one online http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl… )
If you were to spend more money, I would suggest a usb audio interface, but the performance of the y-cable should be all you need.
I actually use the y-cable setup for what I call budget-gigs. These are times when people want a wide variety of music that I wouldn’t bother mixing on turntables. It’s super-easy to let the computer do the work. I also run a line out of my computer into my mixer on every gig… If it’s a wack crowd with varied music tastes, or if the client tries to command me to play his playlist, or if people keep bothering me with requests, I’ll slide out of Serato (turntable control interface) and into Mixmeister, which I use for auto-mixing, coming out of the computer headphone jack. Then I concentrate more on schmoozing with the crowd than on my mix.